Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Popping the bubble on Afghanistan

My children aren’t fighting overseas — my older son is 22, but he’s headed off to graduate school in the fall, not basic training — and our friends’ children aren’t dying.

I know the costs of war in blood and national treasure — I even feel those costs at times, such as when watching the heartbreaking news footage last weekend from the funeral of Marine Cpl. Conner Lowry, 24, a Southwest Side native killed recently while conducting combat operations in Afghanistan.

But for the most part, these costs are abstractions to me and others inside the protective bubble, data points in a foreign-policy analysis of the pros and cons of continuing the longest war in our history.

It’s easy to maintain this emotional distance because the U.S. doesn’t have a military draft. Though we all pay the price as our economy sags under the weight of at least $1 trillion in war-related expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan, only the military volunteers and their families pay the ultimate price.

My son is safe to pursue his studies. So I’ve been safe to view the situation in Afghanistan with a certain detachment, as though it’s some grotesque yet intriguing game of resource deployment where the goal is enhancing long-term national security.

You can make the case that a certain detachment is a good thing, at least on the part of leaders who have to make tough tactical decisions and put lives at risk today to achieve positive outcomes in the future. Freedom was not won nor can it be preserved without terrible sacrifice.

But you can also make the case that detachment is obscene — that it reflects a willingness to consider other people’s sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, even fathers and mothers as chits on a board. Living in the protective bubble makes it too easy to nod at the reassurances that the sacrifices are worth it, that the deaths aren’t in vain. It makes it too easy to accept vague, even dubious, rationales for continuing the fight.

My column doesn’t often focus on international matters, but as things continue to look bleak in Afghanistan and soldiers roughly my son’s age continue to come home in flag-draped boxes, I’ve become less and less comfortable inside my bubble.

If we had a military draft and if President Barack Obama ordered my son to put his life on the line half a world away trying to create peace in a fractious, primitive, nearly ungovernable country, I’d be mad as hell.

The attempt to establish a stable government and safe society is noble enough, but given how unlikely it is to succeed in the long run, is it worth Americans dying in the attempt?

The idea of decimating the Taliban and denying al-Qaida a safe haven from which to plan terrorist acts simply sounds futile. Enemies of the West don’t need generous swaths of real estate or even enemy nations in which to train, nor will they be discouraged or dissuaded by whatever flimsy power structure we ultimately leave behind.

Afghanistan was grim and chaotic before we intervened in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and it will be grim and chaotic long after we’re gone.

So I have no excuse for not being mad as hell on behalf of those parents, spouses and children whose loved ones are putting their lives on the line half a world away and who don’t have the luxury of viewing the conflict from within a bubble.

An ABC News-Washington Post poll released over the weekend showed 60 percent of Americans now say that the war in Afghanistan is no longer worth fighting, and that 54 percent feel we should withdraw our military forces even if the Afghan government isn’t prepared to control the country. That poll of 1,003 adults was taken last week, before the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians by a deranged U.S. soldier that could make the U.S. mission even more difficult.

All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war in Afghanistan has been worth fighting, or not? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?

Worth fighting -- Strongly 17%, Somewhat, 18% NET-- 35%

Not worth fighting -- Strongly 44%, Somewhat 16% NET -- 60%

Do you think the United States should keep its military forces in Afghanistan until it has trained the Afghan army to be self-sufficient? 43% Do you think the United States should withdraw its military forces even if the Afghan army is not adequately trained ? -- 54%

Pew Research Center. Jan. 11-16, 2012 -- Do you think the U.S. should keep military troops in Afghanistan until the situation has stabilized (38%) or do you think the U.S. should remove troops as soon as possible? (56%)

CNN/ORC Poll. Nov. 18-20, 2011 -- Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan? Favor 35% Oppose 63 %

Afghan history is a sobering antidote to the relentless optimism of the American military. Modern Afghan history indicates that no Afghan National Army of any size or set of skills has ever warded off a single foreign enemy or done a lick of good for any Afghan ruler.

The Afghan people — on whose behalf we are fighting so valiantly — are total ingrates and simply do not appreciate all that we’re doing for them. A poll of Afghan men released earlier this month by the International Council on Security and Development found overwhelming opposition to NATO operations in their country. First there was this in Southern Afghanistan, where most of the fighting has taken place and where we are liberating residents from Taliban tyranny:

Are the NATO military operation good or bad for the Afghan people?

Good - 12% Bad 87%

Then there’s this (result on the same question) from Northern Afghanistan, long said to be the region most sympathetic to NATO’s fighting:

A more rapid withdrawal would be the worst possible outcome for Afghanistan right now. The desire to cut losses is understandable, even justified, but it would plunge Afghanistan into madness and anarchy. That’s because there remains no political process at work in Afghanistan than can address the fundamental conflict driving the war: a political contest between the current, corrupt government and the insurgency that rejects that government. The current line about so-called reconciliation – the negotiations process, which demands the Taliban accept the very Afghan constitution they’re fighting to upend – doesn’t account for any of Afghanistan’s politics. It is merely a call to surrender.

(Cpl. Conner) Lowry's death was more personal for Bill DeWitt, 33, who has been friends with Lowry's family for years.

"The only thing going through my mind is the family — just trying to support them and help them," DeWitt said as he gathered with other friends in the church's parking lot before Lowry's wake Friday. "He was just an all-around great person. It just hurts."

Comments

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Eric, I think, at the beginning, Afghanistan was seen as a noble cause, an effort to get those responsible for 9-11. I hate to use the term "the good war," but I think that's what many people thought. So ... I guess as a parent I would see that as a more noble cause, if you will, than Iraq, an adventure I was against from the very beginning, I'm proud to say. And I was roundly criticized for it at some points. (Once, at our park district fitness center, right before the war started, the early-morning crowd started talking and only two of us, out of at least 10, were adamantly opposed. That was still in the Weapons of Mass Destruction era.) If I'd had a child die in Iraq, my bitterness would know no bounds.

I think the change in opinion has come as the long slog has continued, and, as you note, no change has come. Bin Laden didn't die because of our involvement. I'm not sure anything has changed as a result of our involvement.

Despite what I said above, I think military families deal, to a certain extent. They find value, honor and valor. I don't know if I would or could (though my brother, in his 50s, mind you, went to Afghanistan a few years ago, with the reserves.

I apologize for rambling ... but in the end, I think you're right in that disassociation from the nitty-gritty of involvement and deployment has also mean disassociation from the costs. I completely agree with you - if all our sons and daughters (and I have three daughters, ages 19-24) were at risk, we'd be a lot more careful about the harm's way in which we placed them.

When Richard Nixon ended the draft during the Vietnam War, he made a devil's bargain with the American people, renewed by every president since: Let me declare wars with minimal or no involvement by Congress, and your sons won't be forced to fight in them.

Great column! Three of my colleagues lost sons to the wars in the past five years. I don't have male children, but I deeply feel for the mother of one who recently took an extended leave of absence a year after she lost her 22 year old son. The pain survivors suffer is incredible; something many of our politicians fail to acknowledge or consider when engaging in extensive foreign involvement.

Having what I said above, I do remain deeply conflicted that, should we pull out and leave Afghanistan in chaos, which seems likely, that the sacrifices others have made will have been for ... nothing. What I don't know -- does anyone? -- will we able to keep a lid on things if we stay? Would things be better if we'd done more sooner? I simply don't know the answer to those questions.

I went to the Conner Lowry wake on Friday. Conner was a good friend of my nephew's. I went with a friend whose son is a marine serving in Afghanistan in the same MOS (I had to have it explained, "Military Occupational Specialty) as Conner Lawry, meaning his son is doing the same job that got Conner killed, gunner on a Humvee.
We went right at the beginning of the wake, 2 p.m. Friday "to beat the crowd". It was a weekday afternoon, it took us 45 minutes to get to the casket and meet the family. So, I understand Eric's point, but alot more people are affected and touched by these trajedies than you might think.
That being said, I agree with Bill Maher's point, also mentitioned by Eric. Maher show's some goofy old footage of what is supposed to be a Taliban training camp. The guys are swinging on monkey bars. Maher always says "You know, they really don't need the monkey bars." His point being this is not a conventional war, fought by armies in traditional battle fields with traditional training camps. In these wars, the enemy we are fighting is even harder to distinguish from the civilian population than in Viet Nam. The war against terrorism is a war that has to be fought with advance intelligence, good police work and citizen alertness.
The cost/benefit ratio in lives of young men lost and economic drain on our country is no where near worth the benefit of how we leave these countries after we pull out. These countries are not like France, after we defeated Germany. We helped save the world, in World War II. They are going to have to function as best they can, at some point. We can't continue running around the globe trying to weed out terrorist needles in very foreign population haystacks.
My last thought is that there is sometimes a rah! rah! super-patriot thought that you have to be in favor of every war we get involved in, in order to support the troops. I remember Bruce DuMont from "Beyond the Beltway" making the statement that "I don't see how you can support the troops, if you are against the war." Well, let me explain it to Bruce. Sometimes you support the troops, and are a better friend to the troops, when you are not in favor of every proposed war of invasion. I saw that for myself, up close and personal, last week.

Wow, Pan, couldn't agree more. They are still our sons and daughters, but they are "professional soldiers" and "this is what they signed up for." Their families, too. They take a disproportionate share of the burden. We always know we can turn to them, and they will give more, over and over again. It's wrong.

What I never seem to hear when theses stories come up, is the human angle - how the fallen soldier viewed his military service and duties.

Cpl. Lowry had to have been a marine for at least 2-3 years. Was this his first tour?

We always hear how friends and family members feel about it, and the comments from media pundits who feel obligated to comment on it, but how did Cpl. Lowry feel about his experiences in the military and Afghanistan? Was he proud? Ashamed? Was he doing it because he had to, or because he wanted to?

That angle is always missing from these stories, and it should be a bigger part of it.

ZORN REPLY -- for my part, I'm more interested in how the war looks to those who have been out of it for a few months or longer. It's human nature to try to justify what you're doing, to put the best face on things even to yourself.

I came from the time of the draft. Living through that time and serving in the military, if I had my way every single young man (yeah, I still hate having females exposed to the horrors) would be drafted for a year of active duty. Even the poor deserve better than to be sent off to kill and be killed while society as a whole really doesn't care much.

Here's a small test to measure our "concern." Next June, walk out onto the street and start asking people who Corporal Lowry is.

ZORN REPLY -- for my part, I'm more interested in how the war looks to those who have been out of it for a few months or longer. It's human nature to try to justify what you're doing, to put the best face on things even to yourself.

So you seem to think there are 1.5 million+ Americans on active duty deluding themselves every day into thinking what they are doing is right? And they only need a few months to re-think this once they are no longer on active duty?

So we cut and run from Afghanistan (thus every American who died there died in cause that ended in the loss column). Then the Taliban and Al-Queda have a place to regroup and plot against Americans. They may or may not attack here. They could attack on Americans abroad.

Steve: "So we cut and run from Afghanistan (thus every American who died there died in cause that ended in the loss column)."

I suspect that most military families are not willing to suffer even further so that you can score a "win" in your Rotisserie Warfighting League.

Steve: "Then the Taliban and Al-Queda have a place to regroup and plot against Americans."

On September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked by members of al-Queda not the Taliban. That is why President Bush offered the Taliban government of Afghanistan the option of surrendering Osama bin Laden to avoid a war with the United States. http://goo.gl/zYXYV

If you are proposing that the United States should permanently occupy every nation where al-Queda or their supporters are or have been active, you will have to include the invasion of the following to your ambitions:

I'm not sure that anyone in the Pentagon thinks we're up to that task.

Steve: "They may or may not attack here. They could attack on Americans abroad."

They are currently attacking and killing Americans abroad. The fact that those attacked and killed are soldiers and marines does not mean that they aren't fully American or that the families who mourn them are not American.

Excellent column. Sadly, the main thing this country seemed to learn from Vietnam is that doing away with the draft would mute public opposition to unjust wars because the burden would fall only on the families of volunteers.

Dear Eric,
I happened to read your article this morning regarding “the Bubble Bursting in Afghanistan” and could not agree with you more…”bring the troops home now!

I do have “some skin in the game”…my son is a Navy SeaBee and was recently deployed to Afghanistan. While most Americans believe Navy personnel (other than Navy Seals) are immune to combat situations, nothing can be further from the truth. SeaBees provide support for our Marines and are right there with them, building roads, housing and whatever is needed to sustain a base camp.
He is currently on Convey Security detail, providing protection for the conveys that go outside the wire to deliver materials, mail etc. to his fellow SeaBees. These SeaBees have camps near remote villages so they can build wells, roads, etc. to win the hearts & minds of local Afghans, so they in turn won’t built IEDS or take pot shots at them.

Thanks to the internet and modern communication, I am able to stay in contact with him via email or, if I’m lucky, a phone call once in a while. Because of this communication, I have a fairly good assessment of what is happening over there…and it isn’t pretty.

I am 99% certain that when we do leave Afghanistan, the whole country will be up for grabs and everything the U.S. tried to accomplish and all the money the U. S. wasted…and most importantly, all the lives that were lost…will be for naught.

So I ask you to continue writing articles like the one this morning and maybe…just maybe…our leaders will smarten up and bring the troops home now…and not wait until 2014, or later.

Unlike your son, my oldest son will not be going to grad school in the fall, rather he will be commissioned as Marine Officer in May upon his graduation from college. For my wife and I, our bubble burst the day our son told us he wanted to join the military. While we are very proud of our son and support his decision, we would be lying to say we were not fearful of him being placed in harms way. Our fears have only been deepened by the recent death of Connor Lowry. We of course want to see this war come to an end. After 10 years, hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives sacrificed have we really accomplished anything? And what have has the U.S. received in exchange? If you believe recent media reports, the Afghan people hate americans. If in fact Al-Queda and the Taliban still pose a serious threat to our national security, the President can use the military to strike specific targets if necessary. A continued ground war will accomplish nothing. I agree with you. Bring our troops home. Do we sound like a fearful military parents? You bet we are.

ZORN REPLY -- Best of luck, of course, to your son. To me, the idea of supporting our troops requires us to demand of our leaders that they maintain a very high threshhold for sending these troops into harm's way and into unstable regions filled with people who hate the U.S.. It's not enough that it be a noble mission or a mission that might result in some incremental boost in national security; it must be a vital mission, a mission that Americans strongly agree is worth risking the lives of our precious sons and daughters. The polls suggest and I agree that this case has not at all been made when it comes to Afghanistan.

As long as we have war-profiteering lobbyists, chicken-hawks, and a generally non-critical press, we will be paying for our troops to be dying in Afghanistan. Or elsewhere in the Middle East.

The lesson that we should have learned from Viet Nam, and one that Eisenhower touched upon, is that the active involvement of the press is absolutely essential to a country in which war profiteering is not a guiding force.

We lost our country because we no longer have an independent press that was involved as it was during the Viet Nam war. We'll never get it back. The war profiteers have won and now our troops and our money will be in these wars until our country is completely financially exhausted.

When I hear people talk about "sharing the sacrifice" as if it is only about taxes, it makes me want to puke.

THIS is what "shared sacrifice" REALLY means when I hear that expression: EVERY American family has "skin" in the idiotic game we call "war".

As a 3rd generation Navy vet (my son was the 4th generation), this is one of my pet peeves, and I will continue to hammer away at our elected representatives to reinstate the draft for as long as I live.

And "#4" will pick up on it when I tip over, because I don't think we have the guts to do what is right. We are a nation of tough guys when it comes to wars, but a nation of cowards when it comes to actually joining in on the "fun".

Pan - My point was that since FDR not a single president has sought a declaration of war and the Congress has abdicated their powers. True there is no more draft however that just makes their decisions to send our troops out nation-building even easier.

Good column; I wish there had been more of this thinking ten years ago,when the futility of any long term commitment in Afghanistan was predictable. As to the draft; I wonder if there were now an active draft-- which would now also include young women, would the American people support such adventures. The financial cost is only being felt after the fact, in this recession; a "war tax" assessed at the start of declaring (or not quite declaring) hostilities, would also raise the barriers to rash military crusades. There is certainly no reason to believe that continued involvement in Afghanistan will bring success, however defined. Nor can we call Iraq a success; the next few years may well bring considerable disillusionment.

ZORN REPLY -- I would amend your question about the draft only to point out that the American ALREADY do not support the war in Iraq. The volunteer nature of the military is all that keeps us from riots in the streets to stop the war, as this enterprise seems even more fraught and ill-starred than Vietnam ever seemed.

Something I didn't put in my first email, because I didn't want to trivialize this issue, but I would like people to know. Conner was a huge Michael Jordan fan. Jordan found out about it, and, completely unannounced and unpublicized, sent a wreath with his logo, and SIXTY pairs of his brand of gym shoes to Conner's buddies. They were black with green laces as a tribute to Conner's Irish heritage. My nephew showed me a pair and said they were all going to wear them at the funeral. He added, "If Conner could see all of us wearing these tomorrow at the funeral he would crack up laughing."
I hope he did.

My son (Army Airborne medic) has already spent a year there. It isn't good, and he has told me that a lot of Army guys, esp newbies, just aren't trained to handle insurgency combat and guys are getting killed before the experience kicks in. Very poor tactical training.

I hope they wait at least a year before your son ships out, I think will happen for the Marines because I think he gets at least six months of Advanced Infantry Training after graduation.

We're also being very, very badly hamstrung by our rules of engagement. Guys are getting killed because of them, and I place direct blame on the military high command and the White House for these overly sensitive, politically correct and dangerous rules.

2) Some of the rules are incomprehensible. Example: No shooting at someone who is not carrying a weapon. Real life example: Bad guys fire twenty rounds of 81mm mortar rounds at Base Camp MCN'sSon. Our guys fire back. Bad guys run out of ammo, hide behind a rock, and then run away sans weapons. We can't fire at them because they don't have weapons, even though we know they're the same guys.

Example 2: Bad guys approach convoy on motorcycles, hide behind a hill. Our guys sit a wait for incoming--no interdiction because we can't see bad guys. Bad guys pop up from various places, shoot our guys. Bad guys disappear behind hill, then we see the same motorcycles go off from whence they came. We can't fire our .50 cals or mortars because we can't say as a matter of certainty that they're the same guys who shot at us.

Eric,
First - a splendid column.
Next, the elimination of the draft causes the cost of war to be born, I'd suspect, disproportionately, by the middle and lower economic classes. I don't have the data, but would bet lunch on it!
Third, I find most offensive those (often with military experience but seldom with "on the ground" combat experience and, it seems, with no skin in the current war) who are war-mongerers, glorify war and seem totally unable to differentiate between wars that have justifiable causes (and these are far less frequent than they would have us to believe) and those that are waged to salve some bruised ego or perceived national insult.
Keep up the good work. And thanks.

Dear Eric,
You hit the nail on the head in your column today. If there had been a universal draft, like when I was young, we would not have gone into the Bush/Cheney Iraq war, and the Afghanistan war, begun in October of 2001, would have been over years ago.
The majority of citizens have not been affected by the wars (your "bubble"). I personally don't know anyone fighting in the war either, and was saddened by Cpl Lowry's death as well. (If you really want to feel bad, read the obituary of 1st Lt. Daniel A Weiss, which was in the paper a few days ago. It broke my heart.)
I believe we should institute universal draft: every man and woman, at age 18 would be drafted for 2 years into the armed forces. Without a "bubble" I would bet we would not go into war without the consent of all Americans, since everyone would know someone in service.
And to your point, whether we bring our forces home today or in 2014, Afghanistan is going to be a mess either way. (And besides, most Americans couldn't find it on a map if their life depended on it!)

--I'm late to this party but I'll offer my perspective as a conservative who consistently has been against nation-building, and the way both of these wars have been fought, and having a brother who did two tours in Iraq.

First, everyone who has an intelligent perspective on military policy should feel that he has as much right to speak on these issues as someone who has fought or who has close friends and relatives over there. We have a military that is controlled by civilians and we never want to lose that.

Second, I have no problem with going in and wiping out the Iraqi army and Hussein, or the Taliban and its leaders, but once those tactical objectives are achieved and someone else is in power (who has received a stern warning about what will happen if they act up again), there is no need to stay there. At that point, we have no business there and it's time to bring the troops home. Nation-building is wrong for so many reasons but mostly because it costs American lives first and dollars second. Iraq and Afghanistan are awful, horrid backward places that are not going to change regardless of how many lives or dollars we spend there. Obama did a terrific job of taking out Bin Laden with a tactical team. We need to utilize those resources rather than conventional military power. We need to modernize our policy and stop these foolish adventures into places where we don't belong. We have enough problems here, we're broke, and we can't even defend our borders against illegal alien criminals.

As far as this "rules of engagement" stuff goes, if you want to know how that applies in a practical manner in this type of enviroment, read "Generation Kill". It was written by a reporter who was embedded with the Marine First Recon Unit (marine equivilent of the Navy Seals or Green Berets). Anyway this First Recon unit was the first attack wave of the original "Operation Iraqui Freedom", I guess as it was called in about its third incarnation. This unit was essentially shock troops sent into situations to discover what ambushes the Iraquis had set up. They were frequently outgunned and outmanned but performed admirably. They had these same "rules of engagement" and some of these were nodded and winked at, especially when it came to their own safety. The author gives a very balanced account of how tough it is to make hair-trigger decisions in this type of life and death enviroment, but these guys generally learn, in a hurry, to err on the side of their own safety and protecting their fellow soldiers, regardless of what the book says about "rules of engagement".

As the mother of a soldier who served in Afghanistan.... We need to get our troops out of there NOW. We do not belong there, we will never win the fight on terror. All we are doing is helping them breed new terrorist. Every time our military steps a foot out of line, makes a simple mistake, or worse, we take 10 steps backward.

My son served and is not proud of what he did there. He said he served his country, he did what he was trained to do, but he has no pride in it or wearing his uniform. Our kids are coming back from there with some serious psychological issues that the army is not addressing. Is it worth it? Is even one life lost worth it? Is anything that we have done over there worth it???

About "Change of Subject."

"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
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Contributing editor Jessica Reynolds is a 2012 graduate of Loyola University Chicago and is the coordinator of the Tribune's editorial board. She can be reached at jreynolds at tribune.com.